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Severo Ochoa - Biographical

Severo
Ochoa was born at Luarca, Spain, on September 24th, 1905. He
is the son of Severo Ochoa, a lawyer and business man, and Carmen
de Albornoz.

Ochoa was educated at Málaga College, where he took his B.A.
degree in 1921.* His interest in biology
was greatly stimulated by the publications of the great Spanish
neurologist, Ramón y Cajal,
and he went to the Medical School of the University of Madrid,
where he obtained his M.D. degree (with honours) in 1929. While
he was at the University he was Assistant to Professor Juan
Negrin and he paid, during the summer of 1927, a visit to the
University of
Glasgow to work under Professor D. Noel Paton.

After graduating in 1929 Ochoa went, with the aid of the Spanish
Council of Scientific Research, to work under Otto Meyerhof at the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institut für Medizinische Forschung at Heidelberg. During
this period he worked on the biochemistry and physiology of
muscle, and his outlook and training were decisively influenced
by Meyerhof.

In 1931, Ochoa was appointed Lecturer in Physiology at the
University of Madrid, a post he held until 1935. In 1932 he went
to the National Institute for Medical Research, London,
where he worked with Dr. H. W. Dudley on his first problem in
enzymology.

Returning to Madrid in 1934, he was appointed Lecturer in
Physiology and Biochemistry there and later became Head of the
Physiology Division of the Institute for Medical Research,
Madrid. In 1936 he was appointed Guest Research Assistant in
Meyerhof's Laboratory at Heidelberg, where he worked on some of
the enzymatic steps of glycolysis and fermentation. In 1937 he
held a Ray Lankester Investigatorship at the Plymouth Marine
Biological Laboratory and from 1938 until 1941 he worked on
the biological function of vitamin B1 with Professor
R. A. Peters at Oxford University, where he was appointed
Demonstrator and Nuffield Research Assistant.

While he was at Oxford he became interested in the enzymatic
mechanisms of oxidative metabolism and in 1941 he went to America
and worked, until 1942, at the Washington
University School of Medicine, St. Louis, where he was
appointed Instructor and Research Associate in Pharmacology and
worked with Carl and Gerty Cori
on problems of enzymology. In 1942 he was appointed Research
Associate in Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine and
there subsequently became Assistant Professor of Biochemistry
(1945), Professor of Pharmacology (1946), Professor of
Biochemistry (1954), and Chairman of the Department of
Biochemistry. In 1956 he became an American citizen.

Ochoa's research has dealt mainly with enzymatic processes in
biological oxidation and synthesis and the transfer of energy. It
has contributed much to the knowledge of the basic steps in the
metabolism of carbohydrates and fatty acids, the utilization of
carbon dioxide, and the biosynthesis of nucleic acids. It has
included the biological functions of vitamin B1,
oxidative phosphorylation, the reductive carboxylation of
ketoglutaric and pyruvic acids, the photochemical reduction of
pyridine nucleotides in photosynthesis, condensing enzyme - which
is the key enzyme of the Krebs citric acid cycle, polynucleotide
phosphorylase and the genetic code.

Ochoa holds honorary degrees of the Universities of St. Louis (Washington
University), Glasgow, Oxford, Salamanca, Brazil, and the Wesleyan
University. He is Honorary Professor of the University of San
Marcos, Lima, Peru. He was awarded the Neuberg Medal in
Biochemistry in 1951, the Medal of the Société de
Chimie Biologique in 1959, and the Medal of New York University
in the same year. He is a member of several learned societies in
the U.S.A., Germany, Japan, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, and
President of the International Union of Biochemistry.

In 1931 Ochoa married Carmen Garcia Cobian.

*According to other sources, Severo Ochoa graduated from high
school at the Instituto de Bachillerato de Málaga in
1921.

This autobiography/biography was written
at the time of the award and first
published in the book series Les Prix Nobel.
It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.